Politics and its many shades of grey

You spot something good in a politician you reward him or her with a vote. You spot something bad you give your vote to somebody else. What if that somebody else is somewhat good and somewhat bad? What do you do? How do you choose between the various shades of grey?

The popular way to handle this is called the ‘repaint’. You make a choice, based on your preferences. Then, you re-paint your party as white and call everyone else black. Whenever there’s a discussion on the strengths and weaknesses, you side with your club and call everyone else names. If you like Modi, call everyone else incompetent and pseudo-secular. Like Congress? Call everyone else communal. Like AAP? Call everyone else anything — corrupt, communal, biased, paid — because, well, AAP is perfect.

Really makes for a great thriving democracy, doesn’t it?

Instead of applying our minds to the task of choosing between shades of grey, we think we are being good citizens if we repaint our choice.

Why do we do this? The main reason is human beings get extremely uncomfortable with uncertainty. In our personal life too, we find it easier to slot people as good or bad. No human being is completely good or totally bad. A good person may do something wrong in a lapse of judgment or given the circumstances. In the same way, there are no pure evil people on this earth.

How people operate, which mirrors how politics and political parties operate, is on incentives. If you incentivize goodness, you will find the person or the politician turning good. Provide an incentive to do something bad, and people will do the same. If we want change in the country, we have to understand human psychology and mirror it in our political systems. Screaming oneself hoarse about what is wrong, organizing protests, trying to shame somebody big or quitting if things don’t go your way is going to have a limited effect.

Yes, I am talking about AAP. The party raised the hopes of a large number of Indians, but quickly dashed them. They did help identify a great problem — corruption — but the means used to fix the problem were superficial. Sometimes, they were even in conflict with other important moral values in a society such as decorum, stability, respect for rules and patience. No matter how deep and genuine your pain, society seldom allows violation of law, order and process to fix it on a regular basis.

If AAP had taken the path of politics versus activism, why didn’t they wait until they had enough political power to make the changes they want? What was the big hurry?

The other issue with AAP was the complete lack of understanding of how wealth is created, the importance of stakeholders other than voters in a thriving democracy hungry for growth. One fails to understand what made them take such an extreme leftist attitude, when a big portion of their support base was middle class youth who want private sector opportunities more than almost anything else.

Does AAP have a problem? Yes indeed it does. I maintain a personal tracker of political mood on my Facebook fanpage (admittedly a skewed higher-socioeconomic demographic), where I ask people their preferred party for Lok Sabha. Last week, AAP clocked 21% (BJP 75%, Cong 4%), compared to AAP at 36% (BJP 60%, Cong 4%) early January. AAP has lost over 40% of its base on social media in less than two months.

If AAP indeed wants to be a changemaker, it has to understand human psychology. Others aren’t black. They are not white. Of course, this applies to BJP and Congress too, but AAP wants to be the change, isn’t it?

AAP is honest and we need it around. However, it has shown a lack of patience, compromised on many important societal values, and doesn’t seem to have understood the gravity of restoring economic growth.

Modi has creative ideas and experience. He thinks in a way that can make India wealthy. However, we have to ensure it doesn’t get too authoritarian under him, personal freedoms are respected, certain communities don’t feel insecure, and critics feel free to criticize anything he does wrong. Rahul wants to change things, but he seems to have lesser clout in the Congress than what most people think.

All political parties in India are a mixed, grey bag. They are this way because we Indians are a mixed grey bag. Let us choose one, but never let them feel they are perfect. Let us reject another, but never let them feel they are entirely useless. Grey is tough to handle. But grey is life.